Sunday, September 18, 2011

It appears the coloring book depicting Osama's death has caused a lot of controversy. Well, I can see why. It may be too harsh a subject matter for little kids. I wouldn't buy the coloring book for my grandkids. Not that I mind depictions of Osama cashing in his chips, I have done a few in my time. But mine weren't intended for small children.

When I was a kid with coloring books, there weren't any depicting American troops mowing down Nazis, even though it was soon after World War II. I drew my own, of course, but there weren't any commercially available. It was just too brutal a subject matter for children.

I found an actual page online from the controversial coloring book and it is above left. Below the uncolored version is one I colored in with Photshop CS5. This latest version of Photoshop is very cool, and I colored the picture to see what CS5 could do, as well as for laughs. Pass this example along to your little kids so they can properly depict Osama getting his head blown off. You sick puppy!

Seriously, to help your children color it right, buy them a $1,000 copy of Photoshop CS5 and a new laptop. Beats the heck out of color crayons any day.

Even more seriously, I read that cartoonist Garry Trudeau uses Photoshop to color his drawings. He draws them first in pencil, then goes over them in black ink, then has staff scan them into a graphic file (probably a jpg). Staff then uploads the scan into Photoshop where any imperfections can be easily corrected. You can erase unnecessary lines and use the liquid filter to reshape parts of the drawing that aren't quite right. Finally, you can use the magic wand tool to easily color sections of the scanned drawing (as I did in the example above). If you really want to impress, you can copy and paste garment patterns into the pants, shirts, etc, using the "paste into" option.

By the way, I didn't pay full price for my copy of CS5, since I am a long-time user and only have to pay an update price. This exercise has made me aware that I may be able to create some better graphic art. I can draw pretty well using pencil and paper, not as well with a graphic tablet. Then I can do the scan and color in CS5. Gotta try it (actually, I already did, see previous post about the coloring book).

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